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Dec. 13 — The Trump administration is expected to pepper foreign trade agreements with job-saving
measures like those that labor unions have said should be a part of any deal.

“Trump has criticized other agreements because they’ve given large job losses,” Robert
Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at Harvard’s Kennedy School,
told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 12. “He claims his agreements will solve that problem, and
that is in line with what labor unions want. The more he emphasizes jobs and less
about what companies want, the more that labor will be happy.”

President-elect Donald Trump and labor unions have criticized existing trade pacts
such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. The deals have shifted manufacturing
overseas and placed limits on enforcement of laws including those that cover labor
and currency manipulation, critics say. That criticism also includes the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, a proposed 12-nation deal much-ballyhooed by President Barack Obama but
which Trump has vowed to scrap when he takes office.

Removal of the TPP would create opportunities for alternate multinational trade deals
or bilateral pacts with individual countries.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have voiced mixed views about trade deals under
a Trump administration. Some Democrats fear the pacts would exclude protections of
certain worker rights.

Unions Have to Convince Congress

Any trade agreements that the Trump administration negotiates will require approval
from Congress. That means labor unions will have to lobby both Democrats and Republicans
for the provisions they want to see in those deals, Lawrence said.

“Ultimately a trade agreement will have to be passed by Congress, so any trade agreement
in a sense requires enough support in Congress and to a degree there has to be some
Republicans,”
Lawrence said. “There are some Republicans who do not support trade” and could mirror
support of Democrats who have championed for trade deals that include labor standards.

Many Democrats have been in lockstep with unions in calling for minimum wage, collective
bargaining and other labor protections in trade agreements. Republican lawmakers have
been more willing to compromise on such issues in NAFTA and other trade deals, Lawrence
said.

“Generally Republicans have compromised on labor to get what they want with regards
to issues such as market access and intellectual property protections,” he said.

Labor unions have also been outspoken critics of fast-track authority, which gives
the White House the power to close trade deals with limited congressional oversight.

The trade promotion authority law passed in 2015, for instance, requires only a simple
majority vote from Congress and doesn’t allow lawmakers to offer amendments to pending
agreements. The law covers all trade deals through July 2018.

“The president does have fast-track authority that allows him to get through the Senate
without a filibuster,”
Lawrence said. “That means he could pass a trade agreement without any Democrats.”

It’s not ultimately clear if Trump will lean on labor unions for guidance in sculpting
trade pacts. Trump is no stranger to unions. The mogul’s business owns properties
employing workers represented by unions, including the Trump International Hotel in
Las Vegas.

“I think the first big step on fair trade is to make sure tax code incentives keep
the jobs here in America and eliminate incentives to move overseas. I think that is
critical and trade often bears the brunt for our noncompetitive tax code today and
it favors imports over exports,” he said.

Trump’s negotiation skills should help the U.S. retain jobs because he’ll look at
what hasn’t worked with past deals, Brady said.

“My recommendation to him is take a look at our existing agreements and the new ones
and keep what works for America and fix what doesn’t, but keep our companies competing
in those regions because those are the customers we have to have,”
Brady said. “We want strong economic growth and we have to have access to those customers.”

Unions Ready to Work With Trump?

Unions such as the United Steelworkers are voicing support for Trump’s campaign promise
to renegotiate trade deals such as NAFTA and the granting to China of permanent normal
trade relations (PNTR) status.

“President-elect Trump has talked about renegotiating trade deals like NAFTA and PNTR
with China. Having opposed these deals when they were under initial consideration,
we would support such actions,” USW President Leo W. Gerard told Bloomberg BNA in
a Dec. 13 e-mail. “The USW has been fighting bad trade deals for almost 40 years now,
including filing some 50 trade cases”
with the Commerce Department and International Trade Commission “seeking anti-dumping
and countervailing duties to protect American jobs”
in sectors “ranging from steel to paper to tire.”

Larry Cohen, who retired in 2015 as president of the 700,000-member Communications
Workers of America, told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 7 that labor unions will have to champion
their own needs. That includes the investor state dispute settlement, which unions
have dubbed as unjust “corporate courts” used to challenge U.S. laws outside court.

“I think a key element is stripping out investor state dispute settlement, which basically
has made these deals not about trade at all but about guaranteeing profits for multinational
corporations,” Cohen said. “My hope and our continued work will be to fight anything
that has that in it, and for enforcement of workers’ and environmental rights. In
short, my belief on trade, as on everything else, is we’ll be organizing not collaborating.”

Labor Unions Seek Standards in Trade Pacts

Harvard’s Lawrence said labor unions have a voice in the trade process, including
through the U.S. trade representative’s labor advisory committee.

The unions are primarily interested in protecting basic labor standards and securing
trade adjustment assistance for laid-off workers. The TAA program provides benefits
such as unemployment compensation, wage insurance and training for workers who lose
their jobs because of competition from foreign countries.

Rules of origin is another concern expressed by labor union officials, Lawrence said.
Those rules dictate how much of a certain product must be made in a participating
country to avoid tariffs.

Unions Excluded From Negotiations Table?

So far, the president-elect has shown what he can do without labor’s involvement.
That included ushering in a deal in late November that saved some 1,000 Carrier Corp.
jobs in Indiana.

Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who remains governor of Indiana until Jan.
20, touted the $7 million package of state tax and other incentives as a means to
keep the furnace plant in Indiana after the air-conditioning and refrigeration manufacturer
said it was moving the operation to Mexico.

The deal between Trump and Carrier didn’t include input from leaders of the United
Steelworkers, which represents many workers at the plant.

A similar situation could play out with trade talks. Unions could be at the bargaining
table or excluded from the process if they’re unable to agree on concessions, Peter
Morici, an economic policy professor at the University of Maryland, told Bloomberg
BNA Dec. 9.

“If they’re prepared to cooperate and accept what they can get,” unions may have a
voice in the negotiations, Morici said. “But if they’re obstructionists, they can’t
have a role.”

Morici said trade deals often include insight from many parties, which could provide
an opportunity for unions to participate.

“We need both sets of people,” he said, referring to unions and lawmakers. “One can’t
be selling out the country to maintain corporate position.”

Exclusion is one of the largest concerns among Democrats such as Rep. Raul M. Grijalva
(D-Ariz.). “The concerns we raised about TPP are really not echoed by the Trump administration,”
Grijalva told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 8.

“We talked about fair trade, we talked about workers, we talked about environmental
concerns, we talked about the role in climate change, and I don’t think you will hear
about that from this administration,” said Grijalva, a member of the House Education
and the Workforce Committee.

Such deals could mirror problems in prior trade pacts and “not deal with any of the
consequences of a trade deal that does not balance both nations and makes sure the
corporations are working responsibly, not shedding jobs here or exploiting there,”
he said.

Unions Already Part of Advisory Process

Even though the AFL-CIO and unions such as the USW were involved in the trade representative’s
advisory board, they have felt their concerns weren’t included in the proposed TPP,
Lawrence said.

Several labor union officials didn’t respond to Bloomberg BNA’s requests for comment
from Dec. 9 to 13. That includes Celeste Drake, a trade and globalization policy specialist
for the AFL-CIO, which represents 56 member unions.

Drake testified Jan. 13 before the International Trade Commission about how previous
trade deals “increased trade globalization of the corporate model” that led to the
increased “trade deficits and a corresponding loss of jobs for America’s workers.”

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